Paint and Sip Coomera: An 80s and 90s Singalong at The Wattle Hotel

Coomera, you turned The Wattle Hotel into something special this May. A full house, a sea of blue aprons, an 80s and 90s singalong in full swing and a room slowly filling up with sea turtles. Not real ones, obviously, although that would have been a night. We are talking canvases, and by the end of it every easel in the room had a turtle on it that genuinely belonged on a wall at home. Here is how it all went down.

A full house at The Wattle Hotel

Full house, as per usual. The Wattle Hotel filled right up, the aprons went on, and the room settled into that particular Coomera kind of buzz where nobody quite knows what they have signed up for and everybody is keen anyway. An 80s and 90s singalong does a lot of the heavy lifting here. The music starts, shoulders drop, and people who walked in a little nervous about the painting quietly forget to be nervous at all. That is the trick of the whole thing. Get the room singing and the brushes follow on their own.

The mic kept getting passed around

The lovely Lotti Rem was on the mic for the night and she set the tone early. Live music does something a backing track never will, and the room leaned into every chorus she handed them. Then came the karaoke, and this is the bit we love. Our first two guests up were a couple of younger girls who did not hesitate for a second, grabbed the mic and gave it an absolute cracking go. That was all it took. One brave run breaks the seal, and after watching those two, a proper plethora of ladies decided they were next. The mic barely got a rest after that. Plenty of songs got a workout, but if we are handing out a prize for the most committed performance of the night, Livin' on a Prayer takes it in a landslide. That one did not get sung so much as belted, by what sounded like the entire room at once.

Here to paint, and paint they did

Here is the thing about this Coomera crowd. They came to paint, and paint they did. The artwork for the night was a sea turtle, and it is a beauty: a big stained-glass shell glowing in sunset oranges, corals and gold, bold dark outlines holding every segment in place, all of it gliding across a deep ocean blue dotted with little bubbles. It is also, we will be honest, not a beginner's warm-up. There are a lot of steps in that turtle. A lot. The shell alone is a patient piece of work, and there are fiddly bits in there that test you. Our host walked the room through it stroke by stroke, step by step, and Coomera rose to every single one of them.

Every turtle came out a little different

The best part of a full room all painting the same artwork is that not one of them ends up the same. Some shells ran warm and fiery, some leaned soft and pink, the odd one went rogue and turned out green, and every single one had a bit of its painter in it. That is exactly how it should be. Heaps of smiles, plenty of singing, and a lot of very proud people holding canvases up at the end of the night. Have a quick look for yourself.

Massive thanks to everyone who came out to The Wattle Hotel, to Lotti for carrying the tunes, and to Coomera for being exactly the kind of crowd that makes this easy. If you missed this one, do not stress, more nights are already landing on the calendar. Have a look at what is coming up in Coomera and everything happening across the Gold Coast, then grab your seat before it books out. Prefer the whole night to your own crew? A private session sorts a hens do, a birthday or a work night out.

See you at the next one. Trent & James.